Center for Public Health Kinetics was originally founded in the year 1995 as a collaborative center between Johns Hopkins University, Annamalai University and Delhi Based System.
At that time given the primary focus of work was on micronutrients it was called Center for Micronutrient research which was established as an off-site center of the Annamalai University by a Resolution of the Senate. The scope of the work was expanded and the center was called Center for Micronutrient Research-Clinical Trials and Operations Research in Maternal and Child Health (CMR-CTORMCH), in 2005. With the change in the regulations of Govt of India, requiring the institutional IRB to be within 100-150 Kms of the field site, It was clear that Delhi/UP site could not be affiliated for regulatory purposes to Annamalai University any longer. Concurrent to this Annamalai University was also taken over by Govt. of Tamil Nadu as state university.
These changes necessitated us to register the Delhi Research Center as an independent entity which was done in 2011 in the name of Center for Public Health Kinetics. In mandate manpower and research sites and programs there was no change and in fact CPHK is a renamed continuation of CMR & CMR-CTORMCHH
CPHK in its vision as a center for excellence aims to be a global leader in public health and therefore not only work in India but also in other LMIC countries. This has been clarified in the MOA Registration Documents. As a part of this we have provided technical assistance to the projects in Bangladesh (where we also conducted study in collaboration with Bogra Medical College), Pakistan (Aga Khan University), Ministry of Health Zanzibar Tanzania, as part of this international collaboration and contributions CMR and then CPHK has developed a field site in Pemba Tanzania in collaboration with PHL-IdC as local host institution. We have had MOU’s with PHL-IdC and exchange of expertise and manpower for public health research. As part of this collaboration with WHO and Gates Foundation we have established a field site comprising of all 60000 households on the Pemba island, a state-of-art Biobank, which currently has bio-specimens from 5000+ pregnancies longitudinally followed from conception till delivery and now about 2500 children followed till age of 3 years. Coupled with this we have recently established a new block housing state-of-art laboratory in clinical biochemistry, immune-chemistry, microbiology, histology and genetics (DNA, RNA extraction).